Can someone to confirm whether you have to install "EVERYTHING" on the D: drive? I thought with clustering, it installs on the second server for you behind the scenes. You just point the resource "which is the database" on the D: drive. That is what fails over back and forth between the 2 servers.

Usually the binaries are installed on the local drives of each node, but the datafiles (.mdf and .ldf) have to be placed on the SAN. If the datafiles are installed on the local drives like D, during the failover the failed over instance cannot function on the new node.

Thank you that is what I thought and that is what I am doing. I still can't get this to install. I searched the internet and there is some info that I may not have the rights as an administrator. But the Windows SA's have confirmed that I do. So I don't understand.

In my case when I went to do the install, the resources I intended to use were online, but there was a different cluster resource group with several offline storage resources. Until I brought them online as well, I could not install, and was given the same error message.

Suppose you have a 3 node cluster with Node A, Node B and Node C. Suppose you are doing the installation on node A, then there are 2 places in the installation process where you have to assign Drive letters to the SQL Server files

1. During the FEATURE SELECTION SCREEN, you have to specify the folder location for the SQL Server binaries. The location you specify must be on the local disks.

Note that SQLBinariesPath must be either C or D drives. Suppose if you choose D , then the same drive D should also be available on Node B and Node C as their own local drive. Other the failover clustering doesn't work.

2. On the CLUSTER GROUP SELECTION screen , first you have choose a dedicated cluster group (Which is not being Used by any other sql server instances) for the sql server instance you are installing and then

Select DataDrive from available drives in cluster group.

DataDrive can be any drive on the SAN. It must be visible to the other nodes in the cluster. Also LOCAL DRIVES should NOT be used for placing the Databases. If the databases are placed on the local drive like D, the failover clustering will fail.